Ukraine to remove uranium stocks, White House says
Following the first ever meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and newly minted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the two sides announced that Ukraine will give up its stores of highly enriched uranium (HEU). It’s not the first victory for the Obama administration at this week’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, which hasn’t even officially started ...
Following the first ever meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and newly minted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the two sides announced that Ukraine will give up its stores of highly enriched uranium (HEU).
Following the first ever meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and newly minted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the two sides announced that Ukraine will give up its stores of highly enriched uranium (HEU).
It’s not the first victory for the Obama administration at this week’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, which hasn’t even officially started yet. Kazakhstan Sunday agreed to allow the U.S. planes direct overflight of its territory for military equipment headed to Afghanistan.
But it is the first in what State Department sources say will be a series of announcements by countries on steps they will take unilaterally to address the threat that the summit was convened to address: the risk of nuclear material falling into the wrong hands.
Yushchenko congratulated Obama on the signing of the "New START" nuclear reductions treaty with Russia. Ukraine was instrumental in implementing the old START treaty, at least since 1994 when the country agree to give up its nuclear weapons.
Philip Gordon, the assistant secretary of state for European Affairs, was in the Obama-Yushchenko meeting, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Ukraine will get rid of all its HEU by 2012 and convert all of its facilities to operate with low-enriched uranium.
"This is something that the United States has tried to make happen for more than 10 years," he said. "The material is enough to construct several nuclear weapons."
Take a look at the White House’s fact sheet on the announcement here (pdf).
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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